J: A Heart Too Heavy to Carry

Welcome to Sacred Musings, a space where I share reflections from the heart on love, life, caregiving, and the lessons that shape us into who we are. My hope is that these words bring comfort, perspective, and inspiration to anyone walking their own path of healing and growth.

When I was a little girl, there was a woman in my life named J. She was a family friend, the kind of woman who left an impression on everyone she met. J was small in stature, dark-skinned, with long dreadlocks and a presence that filled the room. She wasn’t considered beautiful in the traditional sense, but she had a heart of gold, and people loved her because of it. She could cook like no one else her vegan dishes in the 80s and 90s were decades ahead of their time. Her vegan tuna salad, her black-eyed pea cornbread, those recipes lived in my memory. She could sew anything. She could create something beautiful out of very little.

But her marriage was not beautiful. J was married to a man named U, who was strict, controlling, and, in the end, unfaithful. He dictated how she lived. No TV, handmade clothes, secondhand furniture, the children sent to a closed-off Afrocentric community school. Inside the home, J lived in restriction, while outside of the home, he had a girlfriend and lived as he pleased.

One day, U simply left J. Walked out of her life. He left her with two children and very little else. What she did have were her friends, mostly women from the Community Church in Oakland. My mother was one of them. They gathered around her, offering what support they could such as companionship, marijuana to soften the edge of the pain, church gatherings, community events. They tried to help her keep going.

J never recovered from U leaving. She loved him with everything she had. She gave him everything, her loyalty, her service, her heart. And when he left, it was as if he took the very ground from under her feet. She could never quite stand again. She didn’t get back on her feet, didn’t build a life on her own terms. She seemed to always be moping, always weighed down, always tethered to a love that was gone.

And then one day, she died. Just like that. Out of the blue. I was still a child, but I remember thinking, she died of a broken heart. That was the only explanation that made sense to me. I didn’t know about cardiomyopathy, cortisol, or stress hormones. I didn’t have research papers or medical language. I just saw the pattern: a woman who gave everything to love, who lost it, and who could not find her way back.

Later in life, I learned there is such a thing as “broken heart syndrome.” Doctors study it. Scientists publish data on it. But as a child, all I had was my intuition. And my intuition told me the truth: sometimes a heart can break so deeply that the body follows.

I still love J to this day. I remember her food, her laughter, her sewing, her generosity. I also remember her heartbreak. And I carry that memory as a reminder that love should not cost us our lives. That giving everything away until there is nothing left is not devotion, it is depletion.

J’s story taught me that survival isn’t just about keeping a heartbeat going, it’s about finding a way to keep your own soul alive.

Sacred Musings is my space to reflect on life, love, and the spiritual lessons that come with being human. Thank you for walking this path with me.